If you live in Washington State, loaning her your gun may soon make you a criminal and will likely land you in prison.

Suppose you are a Boy Scout leader. Once a year, the scouts take a trip to a local farm where the boys earn their firearm merit badges. If you continue to stick with this annual ritual you may soon find yourself in prison.

Those two examples illustrate just a couple of the hidden consequences for ordinary citizens if Washington State voters pass Initiative 594 on Tuesday -- the biggest gun control initiative on any state ballot this year.

Gun control advocates are putting a huge effort into winning passage of the initiative. With $9.5 million from billionaires such as Michael Bloomberg, the initiative’s supporters are spending half as much as the NRA is spending on allpolitical campaigns and initiatives across the entire United States.

Yet, despite a huge money advantage, gun control advocates are still using totally inaccurate claims to make their case to voters.

Mark Kelly, who heads one of the organizations spearheading the initiative, made a very common claim for the initiative recently on CNN. He told host Jake Tapper: “right now 60 percent of all gun sales go–occur–with a background check. Why do we allow the 40 percent, the other 40 percent, to happen?” But even the normally anti-gun Washington Post has noted this claim is false and given it three out of four Pinocchios on its fact checker blog. . . .

10/31/2014

News media does what it can to help out Jeanne Shaheen in her Senate against Scott Brown

Hopefully the damage to Scott won't make the difference in this close race, but even a discussion on MSNBC noted that people will remember the charge more than they will remember the reporter's apology. Hot Air has a discussion describing what happened as a failed "gotcha moment."

Simply by using the Internet, ISIS has encouraged “lone wolf” individuals. These “wolves” have initiated attacks on their own with no planning or coordination with others and without leaving a trail of clues about their intentions. Law enforcement authorities and our government are not well suited to defend against such individual terror strikes. As Israel has learned about such attacks, there are just too many targets to defend.

So what can be done to protect public safety? When police and the military can’t be everywhere, the last line of defense is having more citizens carry guns.

The announcement Wednesday that the federal government is beefing up security at federal buildings misses the real problem: as we’ve already seen in the last month, there are an uncountable number of targets. Publicly announcing beefed up security at federal building simply makes it more likely that other targets will be hit.

After the attack on Parliament, Canada rushed to give more detention and surveillance power to security agencies. Not only is such a move more costly, . . .

Penn Gov. Tom Corbett signs a pro-gun law barring local restrictions

Tom Corbett has consistently been one of the best governors in the country on gun control issues. His signing the new law that ends the patchwork quilt of local gun regulations is just one example of that. It is interesting that gun-control advocates who keep pushing state and Federal gun control laws support letting local gun control laws when it gets them what they want. Unfortunately, Corbett has been unjustly beaten up over other issues, such as privatizing state liquor stores or introducing some competition to public schools. Unions are taking a big stand against him.

"He wanted to flee for cover. So in the process of fleeing he was shot and after he was shot he grabbed his weapon and returned fire,” Lt. Sean Edwards with the Birmingham Police Department described.

That employee shot one of the suspects in the stomach before both suspects fled the scene. The injured suspect eventually turned up at a local hospital for his injuries. The second suspect is still on the loose. . . .

What happened at KFC is unusual and the response is not something law enforcement recommends. But in this situation, Birmingham police say this employee's quick action could have meant the difference between life and death. . . . .

A death spiral for Obamacare: Some numbers that point to big Obamacare insurance premium increases

The difference in price between Obamacare plans and these alternative ones provides strong evidence that Obamacare increased insurance costs and that the higher premiums are due to all the new regulations. In any case, this death spiral implies even greater increases in insurance premiums. From Fox News:

The plans, the only ones allowed for sale outside of ObamaCare exchanges, generally cost less than half of what similar ObamaCare policies cost, and are increasing in popularity as uninsured Americans learn they are required to get health coverage. The catch -- that the policies only last for a year -- is not much of a deterrent, given that customers can always sign up for ObamaCare if their short-term coverage is not renewed.

With many electronic voting machines more than a decade old, and states lacking the funding to repair or replace them, officials have opted to return to the pencil-and-paper voting that the new technology was supposed to replace. . .

10/28/2014

So Democrats claim that Obamacare isn't pushing us to a part-time labor force?: 122 colleges force faculty and students to be part-time

Since the launch of Obamacare, at least 122 colleges and universities across the nation have cut student and faculty work hours to skirt the federal law’s mandate requiring employers to provide healthcare for people who work 30 hours or more per week.Those who have seen their paychecks shrink as a result of the Affordable Care Act include students who work on campus at restaurants, bookstores or gyms, teaching assistants, Residence Advisers, officer workers, student journalists, and a variety of other workers, such as part-time maintenance crews and groundskeepers. Educators’ work hours have also been cut due to the mandate, including part-time instructors and adjunct professors.A long and growing list of 450 companies, school districts, colleges and institutions that have slashed and capped work hours to comply with the employer mandate – which goes into effect next year – has been compiled by Jed Graham of Investor’s Business Daily, whose tally chronicles employers both public and private. . . . .

10/26/2014

More concealed handgun permit data

Following the CPRC study showing that there were about 11.1 million concealed handgun permits by the beginning of the year, I then showed that the number of concealed handgun permits in just seven states had increased by over 400,000 from the end of 2013 to July 2014. Since then Florida's permits have increased by another 50,000, Alabama's by almost 100,000, Utah's by 31,000, Minnesota's by about 2,800, and Illinois by about 50,000. It is my understanding that California's permits have increased by about 20,000 to over 50,000. That adds another over 250,000 permits from just four states. Taken together all this adds up to to well over 11.8 million permits. There is no doubt that other states have also seen a significant increase over the same period of time. Again, these numbers do not include the six states where people can carry without a permit nor do they include the numbers for a couple of other states that don't report their information.

Unfortunately, last week's attack on the Canadian Parliament seems to have doomed some simple long needed reform of gun control

Government House Leader Peter Van Loan’s office was silent Friday about the future of Bill C-42. Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney’s office refused to comment, directing inquiries to Van Loan. The Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act was scheduled to be debated for the first time on the day of the shootings, with three days set aside for discussion. It no longer figures on the government’s stated agenda.

But NDP Public Safety critic Randall Garrison told The Huffington Post Canada on Friday that he understands why the government might want to shelve this bill for the time being.

“I think it’s obvious that the climate where firearms were used to murder a member of the Canadian Forces and to bring an attack into the House of Commons means that the climate for a discussion on a bill that would loosen, in any way, restrictions over the licensing of firearms is unlikely to be something the government wants to do right now,” he said. . . .

Unfortunately, these restrictions are the exact opposite of what they should be doing.